Specs of DOS extenders

by : Peter Quiring

Overview

This page will give info on most publicly available DOS extenders and explain exactly what each offers so you don't waste your time with a DOS extender that does not do what you want it to do.
All listed DOS extenders are fully 32bit DPMI compliant.

DOS/4GW v1.9x

This DOS extender offers everything.

EXE supported        : LE (created by WLINK only)
Zero base selectors  : Yes
32bit DOS extensions : Yes
Mouse extensions     : Yes

PMODE/W v1.3x

This DOS extender offers everything that DOS/4GW does but is much smaller and faster.

EXE supported        : LE (created by WLINK only)
Zero base selectors  : Yes
32bit DOS extensions : Yes
Mouse extensions     : Yes

WDOSX v0.94 (non-beta)

EXE supported        : LE (created by WLINK only)
                     : PE (win32) (created by TLINK32 or LINK)
                     : and others
Zero base selectors  : Yes
32bit DOS extensions : Yes
Mouse extensions     : Yes

Notes : This DOS extender also supports the PE format so you can link programs with TLINK32. WDOSX provides a stub program to attach the DOS extender with the EXEs. This stub program is not needed for the LE-EXE format since WLINK will attach the file. But you will need to -extract the DOS extender from the stubit.exe file within WDOSX.

PMODE v3.07

EXE supported        : DOS-16
Zero base selectors  : no
32bit DOS extensions : no
Mouse extensions     : no

Notes : Since this only supports the DOS-16 EXE format you simply link the DOS extender in with your 16bit EXE. The DPMI host is 32bit. Read documentation on using this DOS extender.
This is the easiest DOS extender to use but you have no 32bit DOS I/O and it is not supported by many programming packages such as QLIB. The DOS extender is only good to learn from if you plan on building your own, but not to use in public released products.

DOS32 v3.3

EXE supported        : custom (created by DLINK only)
Zero base selectors  : No
32bit DOS extensions : Yes
Mouse extensions     : ???

Notes : This DOS extender provides it's own custom linker (DLINK).
Since the base of registers are not zero it makes programming harder and slower.

DOS32 v3.5

EXE supported        : custom (created by DLINK only)
Zero base selectors  : Yes
32bit DOS extensions : Yes
Mouse extensions     : ???

Notes : This DOS extender provides it's own custom linker (DLINK).
Warning : This DOS extender is only available in a Crippled Beta stage that does not even work for me under Win95 and the creator has seem to have disappeared.

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